Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011 - rees2009

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) Página 749 de 957
the reported sample. This procedure lead to an acceptable level of confidence on the tests
capacity for measuring mental ability for responding in given times to novel tasks.
2. Sample
The sample was composed by 93 students (64 male and 29 female), exhibiting an age
range between 17 and 25 years; being the age average of 18.6, with a standard deviation of
1.25. The target students are currently enrolled in Technology related programs at the
University of Santiago of Chile.
3. Instruments
The tests were constructed considering the three main concepts: mind resistance (T1),
mind power (T2), and learning speed (T3). The first one, T1, is a subtest that assesses the
capacity to organize ideas, use general knowledge, use working memory and make nontrivial
associations, on a limited time period. Mind power, T2, confronts the student with
the challenge of answering five simple new tasks, that don’t require using previous
knowledge, in a short amount of time. The third subtest, learning speed, T3, that intends to
measure the ability to quickly learn something in a determined amount of time, was
designed through two main axes, comprehension and reasoning.
In order to ensure the instrument reliability a Cronbach’s α (alpha) has been applied to the
whole test, producing a .885 for the obtained results, which, according to Schmidt (2006),
is considered good enough in this kind of studies.
Table 1. Reliability Statistics
These instruments present an acceptable discriminating validity, given the correlations
observed in the chart above. The obtained Pearson indicators on the different test sections
(T1, T2, T3) show a correlation degree, stronger between mind power (T2) and learning
speed (T3) (p=.34). However, it has been ruled out the possibility that they could be
measuring the same variable, considering that the correlations don’t exceed .38.
4. Procedure
The test was applied to two different courses, namely first year program in Personnel
Administration, and first year program in Industrial Automation at the Faculty of
Technology . In both processes the protocol was thoroughly followed in order to avoid
disruptions on the data. The test application took 2 hours and a half, with 5 minutes break
Proceedings of Research in Engineering Education Symposium 2011
Madrid, 4 th - 7 th October 2011